It seems that just about every preacher, politician, and youth worker has opinions about how much media young people consume today. But now there's some information much more exact than opinions.
"Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18- Year-olds" from the Kaiser Family Foundation is the latest study to examine kids and their media consumption. The study, based on interviews with more than 2,000 students, contains tons of charts and graphs, a handful of stunning findings, and some practical suggestions about what parents and others who care about kids can do to guide them through today's media morass.

"Media play a central role in the lives of today's children and adolescents," says the report. This statement won't surprise anyone who works with kids. But one thing that surprised researchers was the degree to which media consumption had surged since their last study in 1999.

Way back then, researchers examining the kinds of media available in children's households described these households as "media rich." Five years later, kids' households are better described as "media saturated."

"It is difficult to conceive of when (or how) today's young people might avoid media and media messages, even if they wanted to limit their media exposure," wrote the report's authors, who include Stanford University's Donald F. Roberts, who co-wrote an earlier book on kids and rock music entitled It's Not Only Rock and Roll.

I WANT MY TV.. MY INTERNET....AND MY COMP.
Kids between 8 and 18 spend over six hours a day consuming media, and thanks to multitasking (surfing the Web while listening to music), they take in 8 1/2 hours worth of media entertainment and information during those six hours.

Until more kids learn to live without sleeping, it seems that most won't spend more than six hours a day consuming media. "We are approaching (or have reached) a ceiling on media use," say the report authors. But with multitasking on the increase, the intake of more and more kinds of media during that sixhour window is expected to continue growing.

Consuming media isn't the only thing kids do, but it takes up a significant chunk of their daily lives. Here's a look at how much time young people spend on some of the more important activities that fill their days:

Watching TV = 3:04
Hanging out with parents = 2:17
Hanging out with friends = 2:16
Listening to music = 1:44
Exercising, sports, etc. = 1:25
Watching movies/videos = 1:11
Using a computer = 1:02
Pursuing hobbies, clubs, etc. = 1:00

Media is a great leveling influence, and there's amazing uniformity in the consumption patterns of all kinds of kids. The only significant differences are that boys seem to like video games more than girls and African- Americans like TV more than other groups.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Parents, youth workers, and others concerned about kids' media consumption will be interested to know that there are three key factors that influence the amount of time kids spend with media. These factors are related to three important issues: availability of media technology, household media environment, and household rules governing media use.

As for technology, kids who have their own TV, video game equipment, or computer in their bedrooms spend an average of two more hours consuming media than kids whose rooms are less well-equipped. In addition, kids who have TVs in their rooms spend less time on leisure reading than kids who don't. The report found that more than two-thirds of young people between the ages of 8 and 18 have TVs in their rooms.

As for household environments, parents play an important role in guiding the ways their children relate to media. For example, the report talks at some length about what it calls "high TV-orientation homes." The report found that half of kids surveyed live in homes where the TV is "usually" on, and 60% are in homes where TV is on during dinner. Perhaps it's not surprising that such "high TV-orientation homes" create kids who are more media saturated than homes where there's more balance between media and other activities.

And when it comes to media use rules, there's a significant difference between kids who grow up in "anything goes" homes and those who live with guidelines for media consumption.

Less than half of all young people surveyed live with any kinds of controls on their media use. But those kids whose parents try to enforce some form of media rules routinely consume less media than kids who have no rules.

Media use rules vary widely. Some limit the amount of time kids consume media, while others focus on content (such as rules that are based on widely used rating systems for music, movies, and video games). But no matter what kinds of rules are in place, kids who live with rules seem to realize more readily that there's more to life than entertainment and Web surfing.

ASSESSING THE IMPACT
The authors of the "Generation M" study shy way from editorializing on the moral implications of their research. But they do point out two interesting correlations: Kids who have the highest media consumption levels have the lowest grades and the lowest levels of personal contentedness.

But we shouldn't hastily conclude that high media consumption causes low grades or lack of contentedness. Instead of high media use causing kids' problems, it may be the case that young people who do poorly at school or are depressed about life want to spend more time with media so they can forget about their problems.

And at least one author believes certain types of media consumption actually help people think. Steven Johnson, who had nothing to do with the Kaiser Family Foundation report, is the author of a new book entitled Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.

Johnson's counterintuitive hypothesis argues that acclaimed TV shows like 24 and The Sopranos actually stimulate brain activity. They do so, Johnson says, by forcing viewers to carefully follow large numbers of characters, intersecting story lines, and morally complex situations.

Such shows provide "cognitive workouts,"says Johnson, who traced the ebbs and flows of a recent episode of 24 and found 21 distinct characters and nine primary narrative threads.

While there are still plenty of TV shows that play down to their audiences, Johnson provocatively argues that some of the more complex shows to hit TV screens in the wake of 1981's pioneering Hill Street Blues actually serve as intellectual wake-up calls for those viewers who are dedicated enough to follow them closely.

Ironically, the shows Johnson says are most intellectually demanding are the same shows that many conservative Christians love to hate, in part because they fail to give viewers black and white life lessons.

But Johnson believes the best shows are those that challenge viewers to think through their own values. "What media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism," he wrote in the April 24 issue of The New York Times Magazine. "The world doesn't come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we're better off with entertainment like The Sopranos that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity."

So here's the reader's handy summary paragraph. Researchers have proven that kids are consuming more media, but social observers disagree about whether this is good or bad. Maybe some future study will answer all these lingering questions.

But I suspect not.

Two ladies were having a chat in a supermarket. One said to the other, "What's the matter with you? You look so worried."
"I am," replied her friend. "I keep thinking about the world situation."
"Well," came the first lady's response. "You want to take things more philosophically and stop thinking!"

It's an extraordinary idea that the way to become more philosophical is to do less thinking. But the ladies in the story were reflecting the modern mood of anti-intellectualism, which has given birth to the ugly twins called mindlessness and meaninglessness. By contrast, consider the injunction of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:20. He begins with the same two words "Stop thinking," but he continues on: "Stop thinking like children…in your thinking grow up." But why should we use our minds?

TO GLORIFY
Firstly, to use our minds glorifies our Creator. It acknowledges that we have a rational Creator who made us rational beings in God's own image, a creator who has given us in nature and in Scripture a double rational revelation. Francis Bacon, the 17th century philosopher-statesman said (in The Advancement of Learning, 1605) that God has written not one book but two— the "book of God's words" (Scripture) and the "book of God's works" (nature). There's an important parallel between science and theology. Science is the attempt to understand what God has revealed in nature; theology is the attempt to understand what God has revealed in Scripture.

Both are investigations into divine revelation, explorations of God's mind. In both (to paraphrase the astronomer Johann Kepler as quoted in The Home Book of Quotations, 10th edition) we're thinking divine thoughts after God has thought them. As the great Albert Einstein once said, the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is its comprehensibility ("Physics and Reality" in Franklin Institute Journal, March 1936).

TO ENRICH
Secondly, to use our minds enriches our discipleship, no part of which is possible if we don't use them, every part of which is enriched if we do. Failure to use our minds in the Christian life condemns us to spiritual stagnation and perpetual immaturity.

My first example of this is worship. Every Christian is a worshipper. But we cannot worship God if we don't know God. Christians aren't like those Athenians whose altar Paul found inscribed "to an unknown god." No, worship is a response to revelation. That's why the reading and exposition of God's word in public worship is indispensable. The word of God is what evokes the worship of God. To worship is to "glory in God's holy name" (Psalm 105:3)—that is, to revel in who God is. So we have to dissent from that worshipper who said that he felt like unscrewing his head and putting it under his seat, since in worship he had no use for anything above his collar button. To be sure, our emotions are also involved, for sometimes in worship we're transported above and beyond ourselves. But in all true worship we're reflecting on the greatness and glory of God.

My second example is faith. It's amazing how many Christians imagine that faith and reason are mutually incompatible. After all, they're never placed in antithesis to one another in Scripture. Faith and sight are contrasted, but not faith and reason. For what is faith? Faith isn't a synonym for credulity or superstition. Faith is not "an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable" (H. L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, in Prejudices: Third Series, 1923). No, faith is a reasoning trust. Consider Psalm 9:10, "Those who know your name put their trust in you." That is, we trust because we know that God is trustworthy. So the more we use our minds to reflect on the character, covenant, and promises of God, the more our faith is drawn out from us.

My third example of enriching our discipleship is guidance. We all want to discern God's will for our lives. But too many Christians regard the guidance of God as a convenient alternative to thought, a device for saving us the bother of thinking. They regard their minds as a screen onto which they expect God to flash answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. And of course God is free to do this. But the normal way of guidance is through the mental processes God has created, not in spite of them.

Notice the beautiful balance of Psalm 32:8, 9 (NIV):
I will instruct you and teach
you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you and watch over you.
Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you.

Verse 8 contains a threefold promise of guidance: "I will instruct you…I will teach you the way you should go…I will counsel you with my eye upon you" (RSV). But verse 9 adds a prohibition to the promise: "Do not be like a horse or mule which lack understanding." In other words God says to us: "I promise I will guide you, but don't expect me to guide you as you guide horses and mules. Why not? For the simple reason that you aren't a horse or mule. To be sure, they have a rudimentary brain, but they lack understanding, intelligence, or wisdom. You, however, were made in my image rational beings and must use the minds which I have given you."

To sum up, in worship, faith, and guidance, and indeed in every aspect of our discipleship, we must use our God-given minds. Our progress will be seriously impeded if we don't, but wonderfully facilitated if we do.

TO STRENGHTEN
Thirdly, to use our minds strengthens our witness. One of the major reasons some people reject the gospel isn't that they perceive it to be false, but because they perceive it to be trivial. It doesn't seem to be big enough for the complex and tragic world in which we live. Of course it's right to simplify the gospel (it would be silly to complicate it), but it's wrong to trivialize it.

The apostles didn't make this mistake. On the contrary, they weren't afraid to use their minds and develop arguments in evangelism. In their ministry, apologetics and evangelism, the defense and proclamation of the gospel, went hand in hand. Paul defined his ministry in the words "We try to persuade others" (2 Corinthians 5:11). But we cannot persuade people without using arguments. To be sure, his trust was in the Holy Spirit, who alone can bring people to faith in Jesus, but the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. It brings people to faith not in spite of the evidence, but because of the evidence when people's minds are opened to attend to it. We need to be able to say to people what Paul said to the procurator Festus: "What I am saying is true and reasonable" (Acts 26:25).

Perhaps the best example is what Paul did in Ephesus when he visited it during his third missionary journey. He began his mission in the synagogue, but then rented the hall of Tyrannus for two years. There every day, some manuscripts adding "from the fifth hour to the tenth" (that is, from 11 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon), when most Ephesians would have been enjoying their midday siesta, Paul argued and debated the gospel. A daily five-hour lecture six days a week for two years is 3,120 hours of gospel argument. No wonder we read that "all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10). For Ephesus was the capital of provincial Asia, and everybody came up to Ephesus at some point—to visit the library or the amphitheatre or the temple of Diana—and while there, many listened to Paul, were converted, and returned home newborn in Christ. It's a strategy for city-center evangelism that we need to recover today.

In conclusion, let us repent of the cult of mindlessness, of any residual intellectual laziness of which we may be guilty. Anti-intellectualism is a negative and destructive mindset. It insults God who has made us. It impoverishes us, hindering our spiritual growth, and it weakens our testimony in the world. Whereas a conscientious use of our minds glorifies God, enriches us, and strengthens our evangelistic witness. We come back to where we began: "in your thinking grow up!"